The robust creativity of Dennis Quaid's performance in "At Any Price" is one of the screen-acting marvels of 2013 and will stand among the best at year's end. As a farmer and seed salesman struggling to stay ahead of the competition, Quaid's performance has the expressionistic swagger of a Thomas Hart Benton painting and is a perfect match for the film's soul and for the landscape's grandeur.

The quiet, discomfiting opening scene sets the tone. Henry (Quaid) is sitting in a car with his sullen, resentful son (Zac Efron), waiting to descend on mourners at a funeral. Suddenly, it's showtime! After the service, Henry goes up to the grieving widow and offers to buy her late husband's 200 acres. He is like a buzzard or a vulture, but he is in a cutthroat business where it's just understood: Get big or get gone.

Henry isn't just doing a job. He is trying to live a philosophy. He has bought into an ethic that says that neighborliness, friendliness, popularity, attentiveness to customers and boundless, baseless optimism are the keys to success and happiness, and so he is always acting, always on, always in the midst of an unending campaign.

Of course, this is the American thing: Work hard, act like a winner and you will be a winner. But what is he winning, and what is he losing? This is a time-honored way of looking at the American dream.

But director Ramin Bahrani and his co-writer Hallie Elizabeth Newton wed this concept to some very modern and diligently researched details about farming as practiced today, with agribusinesses pushing genetically farmed seeds. These seeds are patented, and if a farmer dares to reuse or resell patented seeds, he is violating a patent and can be sued and destroyed.

The crisis of "At Any Price" comes when Henry, in the midst of trying to out-hustle the competition, finds himself under investigation for patent infringement. At the same time, his marriage is under strain and he is losing control of his son, who is in the grip of another American dream: He wants to become a NASCAR driver.

This is a good, solid story with a point and passion, and it leaves audiences with the sense of having encountered a whole world. It's the first really important film of the year.